


Family Ties

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 03:50:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7875070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blair finally meets his maternal grandmother, and discovers who his father was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family Ties

Family Ties

by Bluewolf

**Denver, 1968**

A few days after her fifteenth birthday, Naomi Weir was raped by her father's step-brother - a man who, until then, she had admired and, indeed, idolized.

He laughed at her protests, her threats to tell her parents. "And when I say no?" he asked. "Who do you think they'll believe? Me, of course! Your Dad would find it easier to walk to the moon than doubt me."

But she tried anyway, and discovered that Uncle Joe was right. Her parents didn't believe her.

She tried to avoid being alone with Uncle Joe again, but he was clever, caught her on her own and raped her again less than a month later.

There was no point in trying to tell her parents again. They couldn't see past Uncle Joe's respectable - and very successful - police career. And so that evening she packed a duffel bag with a few clothes, the money she had saved from her allowance and the birthday money she hadn't spent, took the time to write a short note - 'I'm sorry, but Uncle Joe did rape me, not just once but twice now, and I'm not giving him the chance to do it again. Goodbye.' Then, when she was sure her parents were asleep, she slipped out of the house.

She took her bicycle, fastened the duffel to it, then set off, heading east.

Six hours later, as daylight crept into the sky, she reckoned she was at least a hundred miles from home.

There would be a search, of course, though with luck they mightn't realize for a day or two that she'd taken her bike and so be further away than they'd expect... but with Uncle Joe's police connection, a search might spread out from Denver as soon as they did realize the bike was missing too.

She was near a small town. She studied it for some minutes, then hid her bike, stashed her duffel a short distance from it, then walked into town, found a small Mom and Pop store and bought some food that could be eaten without cooking. Then she went back to where she had hidden her bike, made up a sandwich for breakfast - or should she, she wondered, call it supper? - and settled down to sleep.

That set the pattern for the next few days; she traveled during the hours of darkness, slept a little way from the road during the day, bought more food when she ran out... After a day or two she stopped heading east, and went southwards for a while. She wasn't sure if she'd been able to keep up an average of a hundred miles a day - well, a night - but she was beginning to think it was time she got rid of the bike. It had given her an undetectable way of traveling a fair distance from home - after some ten days she knew she now had to be in Texas - but could she be sure that her family wouldn't realize that she had used the bike to travel quite so far? If Uncle Joe had used police resources to try to find her... a girl in her mid-teens on a bike... though traveling by night had kept her under the radar...

And so she decided to stop when she reached Fort Worth. Maybe sell the bike.... or keep it for when she decided to move on? Maybe change her name, say she was sixteen and get a job somewhere... save as much of her pay as possible and then when she had a few hundred dollars, move on. Any search for her would surely be canceled after a few weeks. Yes, she decided; stay in Fort Worth until the spring, then head off again.

But her tentative plans were ruined when, a few days after she got a job stocking shelves in a supermarket, she realized she was pregnant.

***

Naomi sold the bike. She wouldn't really be able to cycle anywhere with a very young child. Yes, she could give the child for adoption, but - although it was Uncle Joe's child, conceived through rape, she found herself oddly reluctant to - well, abandon it. Then she took a few days to consider her options.

Finally, she decided to stay in Fort Worth - at least until her child was independently mobile. She could continue working until the child was due. After it was born she would have to reassess her position, if only because someone would have to look after the child and she certainly wouldn't be able to afford to pay someone to do it. So she would need to find another job, one where having a child with her was doable.

She wasn't sure at first whether to call it luck or simply consider it another case of someone looking for an underage - or close to underage - 'partner', but one of her fellow workers began paying her attention. By that time her pregnancy had begun to show, and she suspected (wrongly, as it turned out) that Tom believed that despite her youth, she would be happy to put out for a meal ticket. But Tom had a married sister who had a baby barely a month old, and Donna expressed her willingness to look after Naomi's child when it was born, so that she could work. Donna herself, with a husband in a well-paying job, was content to be a stay-at-home wife.

The child was a boy that she named Blair, and a bare week after he was born, Tom asked Naomi to marry him.

She hesitated for a moment. "Even though I have a son?"

"Yes, Naomi. Someone treated you pretty badly, didn't they? But I love you."

"It was an uncle," she admitted.

"And you couldn't do anything but run away?"

"Nobody would believe me when I told them."

"I do," Tom said. "Please, Naomi - marry me?"

So she did, pretending to be two years older than she actually was, and became Naomi Sandburg.

But although she was happy with Tom, she carried on saving... just in case.

Donna was happy to look after Blair during the day, and Blair and his cousin-by-marriage Robert became as friendly as it was possible for two toddlers to be. And it was a friendship that lasted, although as they grew older they saw less of each other.

Because six years after Tom married Naomi, he was killed in an accident when another driver ran a red light.

***

After the funeral, Naomi once again sat down to consider her future.

She did sometimes regret having left her parents with no word about where she was, but given the way they had believed Uncle Joe's lies... what else could she have done? Now, however... she was probably too old now for Uncle Joe to be interested in her, and she was also not dependent on them. She hadn't known until after they married, but Tom, who had moved from the supermarket to working in partnership with his brother-in-law, was reasonably wealthy and she was his sole heir. In addition, she had worked for much of her married life; staying at home had never appealed to Naomi, and with Donna so pleased to have two children to care for (neither woman had quickened again) Naomi had worked and been able to save all of her wages; and there was also compensation from the accident, so she had quite a lot of money. She had felt slightly guilty that she hadn't given Tom (who had been a good father to Blair) a child, but now, widowed, she knew that one child was enough.

Because she realized that after she left home... although she had traveled at night and saw very little of the countryside she was passing through, she had actually enjoyed those days - nights - of traveling.

And Blair was six now - a surprisingly mature six - who enjoyed the day trips she had taken him on during the summer. He would probably enjoy some more extended journeys.

She went to see Donna, and found her sister-in-law surprisingly understanding - more so than she had expected. "I always knew you had a restless streak," Donna said. "You were prepared to ignore it while Tom was alive, but now... I'll miss you and Blair, but I won't try to stop you. Just... keep in touch, and remember that Bruce and I will be happy to look after Blair if you find that having a young child with you is too... well, tying."

Naomi smiled. "I don't think I'll need to take you up on that... but I promise I will keep in touch, and even come and visit you occasionally."

She then went to see a lawyer, and left him with the authority to rent out her house, furnished - it would be a continuing source of income for her, although she didn't think she would actually need it; and indeed, ten years later, she had that income transferred to Blair, once he went to Rainier.

When she left Fort Worth it was with the fixed intention of living as frugally as she could, and she started off by hitchhiking, hoping that because she had a young child with her she would find it relatively easy to get lifts. As it happened, the first people who offered her a lift were a group of six hippies (and the children of two of them), and talking with them as they drove, she decided she liked the way of life they followed, and when they said they were going to a commune, she went with them. When they left it, moving on a month later, she went with them, now one of their group.

She stayed with the group for almost two years, joining in their protests even when she didn't always agree with them, but - partly because of Uncle Joe, partly because of the violent way some of their protests were broken up - readily accepting their view that the police were all jackbooted thugs. But then their wandering took them towards Denver - the one place she didn't want to go - and so she left them and took a bus back to Fort Worth, where, true to their word, Bruce and Donna welcomed her and Blair with open arms.

After a few days, Naomi decided she wanted to see something of Europe; and as soon as she was able to get passports for herself and Blair, she flew to Spain.

She traveled around a lot of Europe, then moved into India; from there she went to Australia and New Zealand, then back across the Pacific to South America. From there she went back to Fort Worth, and after discussing things with Donna, she left twelve-year-old Blair there to get some official schooling and left again, this time heading for South Africa.

Left behind, Blair - who had developed an interest in the different ways of living of the countries they had visited - decided that he wanted to go to university as soon as he could and plunged headlong into school work. Naomi had given him some schooling as they traveled - he had a reading age well in advance of his chronological age, and had absorbed a lot of the history and geography of the countries they had visited. Donna had been a little worried that his education might have suffered because he hadn't been to a regular school since he was six, and was pleasantly surprised when he arrived home with nothing less than a B+ in any subject.

His school was very progressive and he was allowed to move forward, missing a year; when he still produced nothing less than B+ he was allowed to move forward another year, and sat his final exams a few days after his sixteenth birthday, at which point he looked for a university that would accept him at sixteen; yes, it was ambitious, but he didn't want to waste a year between finishing at school and starting university, and so that fall he went to Rainier, in Cascade, as a freshman - and with a very generous allowance, courtesy of the rent from Naomi's Fort Worth house. He didn't need to spend much of it initially - because of his age he had to live in university accommodation, which was paid for by Naomi. His books were covered by a grant. So all he needed to spend money on was clothes, and - bearing in mind Naomi's lessons in living well within his means, he bought his clothes from Goodwill.

And because he loved learning, he was in his element...

***

**Fourteen years later: Major Crime, Cascade**

Sometimes Jim Ellison wondered why the Police Academy didn't include a class that taught at least the rudiments of typing, because typing was needed when reports were... well, typed up. Oh, at one time reports were written by hand and sent to a typing pool to be typed up, but with the development of computers detectives were expected to do their own typing, and most of them had no real idea of the layout of a keyboard. Jim wasn't quite as bad as some - Henri was a one-finger search-and-peck typist - but even Jim could only use two fingers, and sometimes had to search for a letter he didn't use very often.

Certainly it wasn't too often he had to type up his own reports these days; his civilian observer had watched him struggling, a few days into his ridealong, and offered to do the job for him. At first slightly unsure, Jim had come to appreciate - more than appreciate - that offer. Blair was a fast ten-finger typist, not much slower than Rhonda, whose job description included typing.

But this was a day when Jim was having to struggle on his own.

The interruption, when it came, was both welcome and unwelcome.

"Ellison!"

Jim took a deep breath, wondering (as always) why Simon, who knew about his senses, had to bellow quite as loudly, then realizing (as always) that if Simon didn't call for him as loudly as he did everyone else, everyone else would wonder why.

He hit 'save' and went over to Simon's office.

"Come in, Jim, and shut the door."

Jim obeyed, puzzled by the expression on Simon's face.

"Your shadow not here today?"

"He has a meeting at Rainier. He's not sure how long it'll take, so he said he wouldn't come in unless it finished a lot earlier than he expected." Jim sank into the seat facing Simon.

Simon nodded, and handed Jim a national newspaper, folded to show a photo. "What do you make of that?"

Jim looked at it. "This... this is Naomi, but a very young Naomi."

"That's what I thought, too. The photo was taken on her fifteenth birthday. According to this report, about a month later she ran away from home. Her uncle was a cop, but even with all the resources he could call on, she wasn't found. After a few weeks with no results, the search was called off.

"Her father died a few weeks ago, and her mother - well - "

"Decided to reopen the search?"

"Yes, though a private detective. This is the most recent photo her mother has - well, obviously. Back then, her name was Naomi Weir - but we all know that runaways often change their names."

"Does the mother have any idea why she ran away?" Jim asked. "Kids don't run away from home unless they have a reason."

"If she knows why, she hasn't said," Simon replied. "All I know is what's in the newspaper report, but that will take the search a good bit further afield than the original search probably covered. That was probably limited to Colorado - the family lived in Denver."

"It could explain why Naomi spends so much time abroad," Jim said thoughtfully. "She has to know there was a search made. We'll need to speak to Blair, see if he knows anything - but that'll have to wait till he gets here, or home - whichever comes first. He said he'd have his phone switched off."

***

Blair didn't show up, so Jim took the paper home with him. He was halfway through preparing dinner when Blair finally did appear, a faintly exasperated look on his face.

"Not a good meeting, huh?" Jim asked.

Blair glanced heavenwards for a moment. "I wasn't expecting it to be interesting," he said. "None of us did. But boy, can you say 'pompous stuffed shirt'?"

"Not so much a meeting as a lecture?"

"Worse. It was a talk - or, rather, a talking to - by one of the University bigwigs. At one level you could call it a scolding; at another, being majorly ripped a new one. I got off lighter than some of the other TAs, but none of us escaped some censure. You'd have thought it was totally our fault that some students just won't work. Ones who've romped through schoolwork top of their class, never been challenged, suddenly finding that work at university level is rather harder than they expected so they actually have to study, and they no longer automatically have the best grades in their class... or jocks on a sports scholarship not doing well with the academic subjects they have to take, and both lots blaming the teaching. The lecturers we're assisting know that - but some of them were snarled at too. 'Rainier has a reputation to maintain, and will only maintain it with an unblemished hundred percent pass rate!' Yeah, right. No matter how good the class is, you've got to allow for the one or two who are brilliant to get a better grade than everyone else. Even if the majority of the class gets 99% you've got to allow for the one who's just that touch better to get 100%.

"At a guess, one of his pals has a kid at Rainier who got a poor grade, maybe because he thought everything would be as easy as at school, and was partying too much... and certainly wouldn't blame his own lack of application for it.

"Anyway... enough of that. How was your day?"

"Mostly spent taking five times as long to type up a report as you'd have taken."

Blair grinned. "Nice to know I'm good for something."

***

Jim waited until they eaten and everything was washed up before he picked up the paper he had left lying on the coffee table in the living area. He'd seen Blair glancing curiously at it, clearly wondering why it was there, because it wasn't the paper they usually got.

"Simon showed me this today," he said. He opened it at the page with the photo and handed it to Blair.

Blair looked at it and glanced up at Jim. "This... this is Naomi," he said.

"That was what we thought. Taken when she was fifteen. A month or so later, she ran away from home. There was a search - but you know what it's like, sooner or later anything like that goes cold."

Blair nodded.

"Anyway, apparently her father died a few weeks ago, and her mother is looking for her again."

"She never said anything to me about her parents being alive. It was after Dad died that she began travelling... "

"Dad? I thought you didn't know - ?"

"She told me eventually... She married Tom Sandburg just after I was born, and I grew up thinking he was my dad. All she said about my... my sperm donor was that he wasn't someone she wanted me to know. Someone she never wanted to see again. That Dad had loved her very much, she had loved him, and as far as she was concerned, he was my dad. He was killed when I was six - a car accident. It was easily proved to be the other driver's fault, and *he* was left paraplegic." He was silent for a moment. "I've suspected for a long time that she'd moved to Fort Worth from somewhere, but I never knew where."

"Denver," Jim said. "And her own name was Weir."

"So... when she was fifteen, she ran away from Denver and ended up in Fort Worth?"

"Looks like it."

Blair considered that for a minute. "Jim... I never stopped to think about it before. Naomi was born in September, 1954. I was born in May, 1969. She was still just fifteen." He sounded horrified. "Was that why she ran away? She was pregnant, her father was angry about it, but now that he's dead her mother wants to mend bridges?"

"Remember, there was a search made at the time."

"Oh. Yes... so maybe they didn't know. But why would her mother start looking for her again?"

"Because her father died? The woman's alone, so is trying again to find her daughter? So that she still has a family?"

"With Naomi? That would be the illusion of having a family."

Jim looked at Blair, hearing the touch of bitterness in his voice. Blair had always seemed so... so accepting of Naomi's frequent periods of being out of touch; but was he in fact seriously hurt by... well, it couldn't really be called neglect, however it might have looked when Blair had started attending Rainier when he was still just sixteen - Blair was an adult, now, after all... but was he hurt by her frequent spells of being incommunicado?

"We do need to let her know her mother is looking for her... " he offered, a little weakly.

"Always supposing she wants to see her mother again," Blair muttered. "People don't run away from home when they're fifteen unless they have a really good reason. But the best we can do is wait till she shows up again; the last word I had she was heading off for a retreat somewhere in Australia - but where in Australia I have no idea."

Jim thought about it for a minute, then said, "Chief - how would you feel about going to see your grandmother?"

"Wouldn't I come as something of a surprise to her?"

"Well, possibly, but she has to know that a grandchild is at least a possibility. And, Chief... it would be giving you a bit of background into your family."

"Jim, my family - apart from Naomi - is Aunt Donna, Uncle Bruce and their son Robert. Aunt Donna is - was - Dad's sister. Dad had one or two cousins as well, but it was only Christmas card contact. Without actually saying so, Naomi always indicated that she had no relatives. Okay, I know now that she did... But what did her parents do to her that she ran away, cut all ties?"

"Maybe the difficulty was never her mother, but her father?" Jim suggested. "You've seen things, working with me... you know how some men behave, how a wife can be so bullied she daren't even try to defend her kids... "

"I suppose," Blair admitted.

"Simon will give me time off to go with you. And I won't let your grandmother insult you - or Naomi."

Blair hesitated for a moment, then, "All right. And if she proves awkward, Naomi never needs to know."

And although the paper had only given the address of the private investigator involved, police resources had made it fairly easy to find an address in Denver for recently widowed Edna Weir.

***

 

Three days later, they flew into Denver International Airport on the earliest available plane, and collected their rental car. Jim had obtained directions from the airport to Edna Weir's house, and mid-morning the roads weren't as busy as they might have been, especially as she lived in a quiet suburb.

Jim parked the car and went up to the door, Blair careful to stay behind him. He rang the doorbell.

The woman who came to the door looked a little older than the 65 or so that he knew she had to be. "Yes?" she asked.

Jim held up his police ID. "Mrs. Weir? Jim Ellison, Cascade PD," he said. "I understand you're looking for your daughter?"

"You... you know where she is?"

"At the moment she's in Australia," Jim said. He reached behind himself and pulled Blair forward. "This is her son Blair."

Edna Weir began to smile, and then a horrified look dawned. Her face went very pale. "You... you... "

She looked to be on the verge of fainting, and Jim reached out to support her. "Can we come in?" he asked. "I think you need to sit down."

"Yes," she whispered. Jim helped her in; Blair hesitated, wondering if he should go and wait in the car, then gritted his teeth and followed them inside.

Jim settled her in a comfortable-looking armchair, then he and Blair sat on a sofa opposite her. "All right - tell us what the problem is."

"She was telling the truth," Edna managed before she began crying.

Jim and Blair looked at each other.

"The truth?" Jim asked gently when she seemed to regain a measure of control.

"My husband had a stepbrother, Joe. They were close in age and devoted to each other. Anyway, just after her fifteenth birthday... Naomi told Barry - my husband - and me that Joe had raped her.

"Joe was a cop here... highly respected... He'd never actually spoiled her, but he - well, indulged her quite a lot, and she'd always seemed to be very fond of him. We... we didn't believe her, couldn't think why she'd say that. Then two or three weeks later, when she didn't come down for breakfast, I went to see if she'd slept in. She hadn't been to bed; she must have slipped out not long after she went upstairs. She'd left a note, saying Joe had raped her again and she wasn't giving him the chance to keep on doing it.

"This time we asked Joe, and he denied it. We reported her as a missing person, a runaway, and the police searched, but there was no sign of her... Eventually even Joe's influence wasn't enough to continue with the search.

"But you... " She looked at Blair. "You look so like Joe... but he was Barry's stepbrother, so it isn't a family likeness... She was telling the truth."

"Mom was still only fifteen when I was born," Blair said quietly. "All she would ever say was the man who fathered me wasn't one I would want to know. Maybe... as I got older and she began to see this Joe in my face... Maybe that's why I don't see very much of her. I don't doubt that she loves me, but I don't see much of her."

"Where did she go? Was her life... was it difficult?"

"No," he said. "After she left here, she made her way to Fort Worth. She found somewhere to stay, got a job... then discovered she was pregnant. At some point about then, she met and fell in love with a young businessman there, and after I was born he asked her to marry him. He... he was a good husband and father, but he was killed when I was six - an accident involving a drunk driver. He left her quite a lot of money, and she arranged for their house in Fort Worth to be rented; and the income from that is paid to me. It's let me carry on studying.

"Anyway, that was when she started traveling, never staying long in any one place. She took me all over the world in the next few years, then when I was twelve took me back to Fort Worth and left me with her sister-in-law so that I could go to school. And then I went on to university - Rainier, in Cascade - and that's how I know Jim. I'm working for a PhD on the police, and I got a ride-along with him.

"Mom's visited once or twice, and that's how Jim and his department Captain know her; when Captain Banks saw her photo in the paper, he recognized her right away."

"And... she's in Australia now. Did she emigrate? Do you have an address for her?" Edna asked.

"No, and no. When she started traveling... she decided to hitchhike, and the first people to give us a lift were a group of hippies. We stayed with them for a while, and she adopted a lot of their lifestyle, and spends a lot of time in retreats where they follow an alternate... way of living, I suppose you could say. A lot of the time I don't know where she is. She writes me sometimes, visits occasionally... but I don't usually know how to get in touch with her. So all I know right now is that she's at a retreat in Australia, but not where in Australia. She'll come back in a few months, maybe phone me, maybe visit, and I can let her know you want to see her."

"Please," she whispered.

"Mrs. Weir - is Joe still around?" Jim asked. There was a slightly vicious note in his voice.

She shook her head. "He was killed a few years ago - a criminal he'd arrested got out on bail and went after him. Shot him twice, screaming that if he was going to prison he'd make sure it was for something the other inmates would respect him for. Joe's partner shot him before he could fire a third time, but it was too late - Joe was already dead."

"Maybe it's just as well," Jim said grimly.

"You'd have gone after him? For Naomi?"

"Blair is my best friend. And while I don't know Naomi well, what I know of her I like."

There was a short silence, and then Edna said, "Cascade?"

"Yes."

"Would you... Blair, would you mind if I left Denver and came to live in Cascade? It's not just because... well, you and Naomi are my only family, but I'd like the chance to get to know you."

"You'd pull up your roots here, move to a strange city, just for that?" Blair asked, his voice trembling.

"There's nothing to keep me here, and everything to encourage me to move," she said. "I promise I won't be a demanding grandmother, but - well - I've got thirty years to catch up on. Thirty years when I didn't even know I had a grandson..."

Jim and Blair looked at each other. "Mrs. Cardwell in No. 205 would like to sell," Blair said.

Jim nodded, and turned back to Edna. "Mrs. Weir, Blair and I share an apartment - longish story as to why - and one of our neighbors is thinking of selling and moving to nearer her family. If you'd like to consider that... There's a reasonable range of shops in the area, too."

"You don't think it would be too close?" But there was a hopeful note in her voice.

"Not at all, if it suited you," Blair said. He launched into a description of No. 205 - he had helped Mrs. Cardwell carry in her groceries more than once, and knew the layout. Not as open-plan as the loft, it had two bedrooms leading off the living room, the main one a reasonable size, the second one not much smaller.

"It certainly sounds ideal for me," she said.

"Okay. We're just here for the day, flying back late afternoon, and when we get back we'll have a word with the owner. Meanwhile, you start arranging to move. If buying from Mrs. Cardwell doesn't work out, you can stay with us - " he glanced at Jim, who nodded - "until you do find somewhere. And just to let you know... It's great having a grandmother!"

Six weeks later, Edna moved into 852 Prospect, apartment 205.

***

**Some months later: Blair's birthday**

Jim and Blair had never made a big thing of their respective birthdays. They'd given each other a present and had a meal out, but never had what could be called a party. This time, however, with Edna there and Blair's birthday approaching, Jim decided that a small family party was a good idea.

Blair had told Edna about his Aunt Donna - indeed, they had spoken on the phone once or twice since Edna moved to Cascade. Jim got the number from Edna, and phoned Donna.

Then he arranged with Edna that she should spend the day in #307 preparing a buffet meal, warning her to expect Donna, Bruce and Robert Moorcroft to arrive at some point. When they did, Donna promptly began helping Edna with the food, finding that they got on as well in person as they had over the phone.

Jim and Blair arrived home to find everything ready, and all Blair's family except his mother waiting for him.

First Blair opened his presents, and they then began eating. They were just started, however, when there was a knock on the door. Donna, who happened to be nearest it, went over and opened it.

"Naomi!" she exclaimed. "Come in! We're just having a little party for Blair..." She closed the door as Naomi entered.

Naomi glanced around the occupants of the room, and drew in a sharp breath. "Mom?"

Edna was very pale, but resolutely took a step forward. "Naomi! Oh God, Naomi, I'm so sorry! We should have believed you..."

"Mom." Mother and daughter moved into a long hug. As they drew apart, Naomi said, "How...?"

Edna took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, Naomi, your Dad died nearly a year ago. After he died, I decided to try again to find you - if I'm honest, it was your Dad who couldn't see past Joe, wouldn't believe... I wasn't so sure, but...

"Anyway, the private investigator I employed put an ad in a national paper, with a photo of you, and a couple of days later, Jim and Blair turned up on my doorstep. As soon as I saw Blair, I knew... knew for certain. Sometimes I've wondered if Barry secretly suspected, too, but just wouldn't admit it...

"There was nothing to keep me in Denver, and I moved here just a few weeks later. Blair put me in touch with Donna, and we've spoken a few times though this is the first time we've actually met.

"Jim thought it would be a good idea to give Blair a family birthday party this year, and here we are."

Naomi seemed to pull herself together, and looked around. "Blair! Oh, Sweetie, happy birthday."

Blair moved forward to hug her. "It's good to see you, Naomi. How long are you staying?"

"I wasn't meaning to stay more than overnight - I know it's not really convenient for you and Jim to have me here... but now... "

"I have a spare room, Naomi," Edna said. "It's yours for as long as you want to stay. Now come and have something to eat."

Within five minutes the party was once again in full swing.

***

When it eventually broke up, close to midnight, the Moorcrofts heading off to their hotel and Naomi going with Edna to #205, Jim and Blair sat and relaxed for a few minutes before going to bed.

"Thanks, Jim," Blair said quietly. "It was good, having my family here - yes, I know Aunt Donna isn't a blood relative, but the Moorcrofts are my family just as much as if she was. And you're like a brother to me. And for Naomi to turn up... Man, I can't remember the last time she was here for my actual birthday!"

"I think she'll stay for quite a while, this time," Jim said. "She and Edna... "

"Can you hear them? Are they talking?"

"Would you have me eavesdrop?"

"Just for a moment... please? Just to make sure..."

"Edna's apologizing again... Naomi's forgiving her... promising she'll stay."

Blair gave a sigh of relief. Then he smiled a little wryly. "Now, if I could only persuade Aunt Donna and Uncle Bruce to move to Cascade the next time one of the apartments here is being sold..."

"Do you seriously think they'd come?"

"Probably not... but it's a nice dream."

"Just be content with having your mother and grandmother underfoot," Jim said. "Because don't forget - your sentinel needs you too."

Blair shifted a little closer, and Jim draped his arm over his friend's shoulders. Blair smiled happily. "That sounds good," he murmured. "And Jim - I need my sentinel too - just as much."

His head drooped sideways to rest on Jim's shoulder; feeling his own eyes closing, Jim rested his head on Blair's; and quietly, peacefully, they fell asleep.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually begun in response to the Sentinel Thursday prompt ambition/ambitious, but quickly began heading off in a direction of its own, so I laid it aside, did another story for the prompt, then came back to this one. Many thanks as always to Nat for the beta.


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